“I didn’t know how to do that when I made them,” said Audrey. She really felt quite bad about it. She’d learned as she’d gone along. Bob and Wiggly Charlie had really been the finest examples of her craft, although there had been some mistakes along the way.
“You have trapped us in these horrible meat creatures, with no voices, with no genitals, except for him.” Two Squirrel People, mostly lizard, pulled Wiggly Charlie through the crowd. His little arms were taped at his sides, his feet bound together, and his enormous willy dragged across the rug.
“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.
“Hi, W.C.,” Audrey said. “I’m so sorry.”
“What did you do to him?” asked Bob. “He seems, well, he’s kind of goofy.”
“Head injury,” said Audrey.
“Really, but his soul is gone.”
“He fell really hard. I really should make a helmet for him. I know, I’ll make helmets for you all.”
“No. You have done enough.”
“It’s no bother, really,” Audrey said. “Helmets for everyone!”
“Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone! Helmets for everyone!” the little People chanted.
“Good crowd,” Audrey said to Bob under her breath.
“There will be no helmets!” said Bob.
Various moans and murmurs of disappointment sounded around the room.
“That’s on you, buddy,” said Audrey. “Don’t blame me if you take a tumble and end up like him.”
“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie.
“No! You have made us miserable meat creatures and now you shall be a miserable meat creature. Seize her! Take her to the hall of souls.”
A score of Squirrel People lifted Audrey, which was very uncomfortable, but she didn’t struggle because most of them had sharp claws and she’d already learned that the more she struggled, the more scratched up she got. They carried her through the parlor, into the butler’s pantry, where one of them kicked the wastebasket out of the way while the rest shoved her head into an uncovered vent. Which was all that fit. Just her head. Her shoulders caught on the side.
“She won’t fit,” said a little voice.
“We can’t take her in through outside, she won’t fit though the hall of glass either,” said another voice.
“New plan!” said Theeb.
“New plan! New plan! New plan!” the People chanted.
The Morrigan waited, peering out of the storm sewer at the Buddhist Center until darkness fell, then they flowed across the street like miscast shadows, their edges fringed with the ragged pattern of swarming birds. Babd saw a window cracked open just an inch on the second floor and so flowed up the wall and through the crack. Macha and Nemain flowed around either side of the downstairs walls, looking for an opening, then, finding none, slipped under the back porch, down the passageway made of auto glass, then up through the vent and into the butler’s pantry, not even remotely aware that they were passing just a few yards from the Squirrel People’s cache of soul vessels.
In the parlor, Theeb the Wise stood between Audrey and Wiggly Charlie, who lay trussed up on the floor, and finished reading the p’howa of forceful projection to move Audrey’s soul into W.C.’s body. With a great flourish Theeb finished the reading, enunciating the Sanskrit perfectly with his newly grown lips, then loomed over Wiggly Charlie. “Now you know the suffering that is our lot.”
“Need a cheez,” said W.C.
“He still doesn’t have a soul,” said the duck-faced guy. “No glow.”
“It didn’t work,” said Theeb. He hopped to a spot in front of Audrey’s face. “What happened?”
“The p’howa of forceful projection moves the soul out of a soul vessel, into a new body, like yours. It won’t work from a living human to, uh, you guys.”
“Then from a dead human,” said Theeb.
Audrey said, “That won’t work either—”
“Guards!” Theeb called.
Four Squirrel People carrying weapons, came forward through the crowd.
“Theeb the Wise demands you stab her!” said Theeb, and in doing so, he stepped away from Audrey and next to Wiggly Charlie to give his guards stabbing room.
“No!” shouted Wiggly Charlie, and bit down on Theeb’s leg, engaging a majority of his seventy-eight needle-sharp teeth. Theeb squealed and tried to pull away, but instead ended up sawing his leg against W.C.’s teeth.
The People all moved away from the calamity in the middle of the parlor, those with voices crying out in distress. A lizard-headed musketeer started to scamper up the big open staircase, only to be met by Babd, who was oozing down the staircase, claws first. She caught the musketeer, tore him in half, and bit into the red light of his soul, her head and talons taking on dimension as she fed.
Macha and Nemain slid out of the butler’s pantry, Macha across the ceiling, Nemain across the floor.
“Run!” Audrey screamed. “All of you, run!”
Nemain impaled two of the People on her claws and they screeched piteously as she bit into one’s torso, and the other squirmed on her talon, the light of its soul dimming in an instant. Macha dropped from the ceiling like an inky blanket and fell upon a half dozen of the People, gathering them in a death embrace, crushing them. Bones cracked, splintered, four souls went dark. Macha stood full form in the middle of the parlor, holding one of the People in each hand, gore dripping down her face and chest.
The People scattered, running for every exit, through the dining room, crowding the vent in the butler’s pantry, some scrambling up the stairs, a few skittering through the foyer and trying to get to the front doorknob. Theeb struggled to free himself from Wiggly Charlie’s jaws. Nemain stepped by Wiggly Charlie, and Theeb stuck her in the ankle with his spork.
“Fuck! Ouch!” She kicked Theeb, who was ripped out of W.C.’s mouth and went flying into the butler’s pantry. Wiggly Charlie went spinning across the floor the other way. One of the guards, an iguana-headed fellow in green scrubs brandishing a screwdriver, charged her, and Nemain impaled him in the chest on a single claw and lifted him to her eye level. She turned him in the air, as if she was examining a particularly fascinating hors d’oeuvre. She looked down at Audrey. “Did you make these? They’re delicious.” Nemain closed her eyes, and tilted her head back in ecstasy as the light pumped out of the guard’s soul —absorbed through her claw as if she was filling a syringe.
Across the room, Macha slung the lifeless body of a squirrel ballerina against the wall, then reached for Wiggly Charlie, saw there was no soul light in him, and tossed him aside. She dropped to all fours and crawled up to Audrey until their faces were nearly touching. Audrey squirmed to move away, wiggled a few feet back before encountering a chair leg, her breath coming in little yips, as if each breath had to resist turning into a scream.
Macha said: “I don’t know whether to take your head, or just open your veins and watch your life drain out on the floor.”
“Oh, you have to take her head,” said Nemain, now standing over them both.
“I vote head,” said Babd, moving up behind Nemain, blood dripping from her talons.
“There you have it,” said Macha. She scissored her claws in front of Audrey’s face.
“Hurry,” said Nemain. “All the souls are getting away.”
Macha snarled, reared back. Audrey screamed, tried to tuck her face into her knees.
“That will be enough, ladies,” came a voice from the foyer. They stopped. Lemon filled the parlor doorway. “Go catch you some critters, ladies. I’ma have me a chat with the venerable Rinpoche Audrey.”
24
Battle
It was 7 P.M. and Charlie Asher had been at St. Francis Hospital for two hours, with no word of how Mrs. Korjev was doing, if the soul vessels had been safely moved, or what was going o
n with Audrey. He had called everyone, and no one had picked up. He suspected either they didn’t remember he was using Mike Sullivan’s phone, or someone was fucking with him. Strangely enough, despite having jettisoned the body that carried his original, beta-male DNA, he still had the personality of a beta, and its built-in, double-edged imagination, which, in addition to helping him anticipate and avoid danger, engendered a suspicion that someone, usually someone unknown and cleverly wicked, was fucking with him. Possibly, and even probably in this case, the mobile phone people.
Fortunately the hospital cafeteria had macaroni and cheese, so he was able to feed Sophie (their other vegan selection being Wood and Leaves with Suffering). Now she was in the waiting room, sleeping next to Lily in one of the vinyl padded chairs designed so you wouldn’t sleep in them. She’d refused to go home with only Lily, but if he could reach Jane and Cassie, maybe he could get her out of here without waking her. Finally, a text buzzed into his phone from Jane. We’re on our way.
He walked over and slumped in the chair next to Lily.
“Something like this happens,” he said, “you realize you don’t really even know the people you know. She’s lived in my building for ten years. She’s helped me with Sophie since she was a baby. There are things I should have told her. There were things I wanted to ask her.”
Lily nodded, knowingly. “Like why she never had that thing taken off her lip?”
“No. Important things. Things so she’d know that she was important to me, to my family. Now . . .”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I did know,” said Charlie. “And so did you. Which is why you should have stopped them from going out.”
“This is my fault?”
“No, but I’d prefer it if it were.”
“Fine. It’s on me.”
“You should never pass up an opportunity to be kind. You should never not thank someone. You should never not say something nice when you think it.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay, then.”
“You done?”
“I suppose so.” He slumped down farther in the chair. “You hear from Minty?”
“Not yet. But . . .” She nodded through the double-glass door, which Minty Fresh was approaching. “Tell him I was badass.”
“You were afraid to confront two old ladies.”
“Okay, tell him I was helpful.”
She had been helpful, in a way, in that she had broken into Mrs. Korjev’s apartment and found her matron’s address book so Charlie could call her sons, one who lived in Seattle, the other in Los Angeles.
Minty Fresh wore a black leather car coat with his usual ensemble of shades of green, but Rivera was wearing an ill-fitting tweed sport coat.
Charlie stood to meet them.
“The old lady okay?” said Minty Fresh.
“We don’t know. It was her heart,” said Charlie.
“But she’s hanging on?”
“So far. They won’t really talk to us—me—since I barely know her, officially. Maybe when Jane gets here.”
“Oh, right. You know that Chinese lady from your building is out on the front stoop. What’s she doing out there?”
“Pacing. They won’t let her bring her cart in and she won’t leave it.”
“Well, leave it in your car.”
“We came in a cab. Followed the ambulance.”
Minty Fresh shrugged.
Rivera said, “I can have a uniform unit take her home.”
“She won’t go,” said Charlie.
Minty looked to Lily.
“Why are you still here?”
Lily tilted her head toward the sleeping Sophie, saying, more or less, because of the kid, “I’m not going to leave town, M. Even if Jane and Cassie go. I have work tomorrow. I’m going to be on those lines if Mike calls in from the bridge.”
Minty Fresh tapped out three beats with his size sixteens, a habit he’d acquired from arguing with Lily over the last year. “Well, at least go to your mother’s place. Stay there tonight. There’s no way Lemon will know to look for you there, even if he’s been watching you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Charlie. “Lemon? This man in yellow that Sophie has been talking about is called Lemon?”
Minty Fresh glanced around the waiting room, as if there might be some obvious explanation written on one of the pieces of innocuous motel art. “Well, yeah, that’s sort of a shorthand I made up, you know.” To Lily, he said, “Anyway, will you at least stay at your mother’s house and take a cab to work? Please.”
Looking at Rivera, Charlie said, “Would you guys run by the Buddhist Center and check on Audrey. I was on the phone when all this happened. We got disconnected and I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”
“We will,” said Rivera.
Charlie held out a key. “This is for the front door.”
Minty Fresh took it and turned on a heel. “We’ll call you in ten minutes.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, and watched them go. He sat on the other side of Sophie and stroked her hair as she slept.
“He loves you, you know,” he said to Lily.
“Not going to discuss this with you.”
“Okay.”
They passed the next few minutes by not talking and not looking at people who were trying not to look at them, except for those who looked at Sophie, sleeping, and smiled. Charlie leafed through some magazines to distract himself, only to find that he was made more anxious by wondering what kind of sociopathic fuck-weasel would do all the puzzles in Highlights in pen. These monsters walk among us, he thought.
His phone buzzed. “She’s fine,” said Rivera.
“How is she fine? Why didn’t she call?”
“She said she dropped her phone and it broke and she didn’t have your new number written down anywhere. She left a message on your sister’s landline. She’s in the car with us. You want to talk to her?”
“Yes! Well, yes!”
“Hi, Charlie,” Audrey said. “Sorry. There was a little bit of a meltdown with the Squirrel People. Anyway, the inspector and Mr. Fresh are going to take me to your place, if that’s okay.”
“Sure.” He looked at Lily, mouthed, She’s okay. “Of course that’s okay, but I’ll be here awhile. Mrs. Korjev’s son is flying up from Los Angeles. We still haven’t heard on her condition other than she’s still critical.”
“I hope she’ll be okay. I have W.C. with me. He’s—well—the Squirrel People were mean to him.”
“Okay. I think there’s some mozzarella sticks in the fridge. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I was really hoping we could spend tonight together, since, you know, we may not get any more after tomorrow.”
“How could you say that? Don’t say that? You guys—” There was a muffled rustling on the line that sounded like she was holding the phone against her chest as she spoke to whoever was in the car.
A doctor came through the double doors in scrubs, head down, looking very serious. He headed right for Charlie, who dropped his phone in his lap.
Jane and Cassie parked in the emergency-only lane at the hospital. Jane stayed with the car while Cassie snuck into the waiting room to retrieve the sleeping Sophie, who hung in her arms like a snoring rag doll. Cassie emerged from the double doors just as Audrey was climbing out of Rivera’s unmarked police car, with a cat carrier containing Wiggly Charlie. Jane jumped out and herded Mrs. Ling down from the landing into the backseat of the car. Mrs. Ling’s cart stubbornly refused to fold up, so Jane chucked Wiggly Charlie’s cat carrier into the cart and fitted it into the backseat between Audrey and Mrs. Ling.
The same sort of stealth fire drill happened when they were bringing Sophie back to the apartment. Jane let Audrey into Charlie’s new apartment and Cassie carried the sleeping Sophi
e into their apartment, leaving Mrs. Ling to fend for herself. When the elevator cleared, Mrs. Ling looked into her cart to see the cat carrier. She wheeled it to her apartment on the third floor, then unzipped the cat carrier just far enough to peek inside, and smiled for the first time since her friend had fallen down.
She had cooked a creature almost exactly like this one before, when one of the early Squirrel People who fancied himself an assassin broke into the building, only to find himself in Mrs. Ling’s soup pot. Duck in Pants, she had called the dish. This one would make a nice soup that she could take to Mrs. Korjev at the hospital. She went to the kitchen and filled her blackened soup pot with water and turned on the flame.
“Need a cheez,” said Wiggly Charlie from his carrier.
Rivera slammed two five-hour energy drinks as an act of faith. Not the faith of his father, which he now looked upon as quaint ritual, but faith in his own anger, because if he looked at the situation rationally, five hours was probably about four and a half hours longer than his current life expectancy. He was exhausted, having driven all over town through most of the night doing what he had come to think of as the “To-Do List of the Dead,” but now dawn was breaking and he and Minty Fresh were pulling into the concrete channel where the old train tracks cut into the knoll at Fort Mason.
“Back in,” said Minty Fresh.
Rivera flipped a Y-turn and backed the brown Ford into the channel until they were about twenty-five yards from the big steel doors that led into the tunnel, then stopped, popped the trunk, and got out. Minty Fresh unfolded out of his side of the car and met Rivera at the back; Minty in green leather trousers and black trainers, Rivera in his oversized sport coat, jeans, and black nylon tactical boots.
Rivera pulled two folding “Men Working” barricades out of the trunk and handed one to Minty Fresh. They set them up in front of the car and turned on the flashers.
“I told dispatch that animal control was going to be using some charges to chase rats and ground squirrels out of the tunnel, so if they get any calls for people hearing gunfire, they have an explanation.”
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